by Amy Jones
“Dad. Papa. We know where Nova Scotia is.” She did, vaguely, insofar as she knew that it wasn’t New York, or L.A., or even New Hampshire—was actually, possibly, could it be, in Canada?
“I don’t,” said Eden softly, and then she began to cry.
“And how is everything?” their waiter said, sidling up to the table.
“Great,” said David and Bryce simultaneously. Ava looked down at her plate, which still contained twelve spoonfuls of Micro-roni. Twelve, she thought. The same age I was when my life ended. She narrowed her eyes at her dads and vowed to remember this day forever.
* * *
Two weeks later, they re-enacted the scene at Smalls for the cameras, doing take after take as Ava’s Micro-roni grew cold in front of her. “It doesn’t have to be exactly the same as it was,” said Antonio, the show’s producer, pulling his ball cap lower over his eyes. “Just see if you can capture, like, the feeling.”
Like, the feeling. Ava felt her ribcage tightening around her last bit of goodwill like a jaw. She hated him already, him and his trying-too-hard, cool-dad vibe. “This is stupid,” she said. “I thought this was supposed to be reality.”
“It is reality, honey,” David said. “This happened, remember?”
“Oh, sure,” she said. “Like I totally forgot about the moment you ruined my life.”
David opened his mouth, then closed it again as Antonio came over to them, writing something down on a clipboard. “One more take. We want to get it from one more angle. Let’s take it from Valhalla’s line.”
“Just Val,” Val mumbled.
“Sorry, Val.” Antonio patted him on the shoulder. “I should get that straight. Val, and Eden, right? Just Eden?” Eden nodded, giggling. He turned to Ava. “And it’s Ava, right?” He pronounced it with a short a, like he had forgotten the second syllable of her name.
“Eh-vah,” she said, exaggerating the long a sound. “Like the way any normal person would pronounce it.”
He raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. “Back to Val’s line.” He turned to Javier, the cameraman—“Rolling!”—then swept his finger toward Val.
“A reality show?” said Val, his voice stiff and unnatural. “Seriously? They’re going to, what, like, film us 24/7? Even at school?”
“That’s up to you guys,” Bryce said, patting Val’s hand, a monument of nurturing parental concern. “You can be involved as little or as much as you want.”
“Well, within reason,” David boomed, in a voice trained to reach the furthest corners of a cavernous theatre. Ava cringed. “When you’re at home, they’re going to expect all access.”
“All access? Like in the bathroom and stuff?”
“Like I said, within reason.”
Ava chewed her Micro-roni methodically. “So,” she said dryly. “What’s the sweet potato?”
“Cut!” called Antonio. “Ava, sweetie, we changed that line. We need you to say, ‘What’s the catch?’”
Ava put down her spoon. “It’s not a line. It’s what I said. I said, ‘What’s the sweet potato?’ That’s the way it happened.” She glared at David, who was inspecting his beard in the front-facing camera on his phone. “That’s reality.”
“That’s also something that’s not going to make sense to our viewers,” David said, slipping his comb into his pocket. “And we don’t have any opportunity to explain it right now.”
“Why not?” asked Ava. “Why can’t we do one of those dumb on-camera confessional thingies?”
Antonio had explained this was going to be part of the show: short segments where they would talk directly to the camera, giving context for some of the “real life” action. For Ava’s first on-camera confessional, she had tried to recite Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy” in its entirety. When she got to the line “Every woman adores a Fascist,” Antonio made Javier turn the camera off. In retrospect, she might not have been doing herself any favours.
“It’s not that,” said Antonio. “It’s not something that will track well.”
“Track well? What does that even mean?”
He shrugged. “It’s too cutesy,” he said. “It’s babyish.”
Ava clenched her fists, trying to contain her rage. “Right, because this whole thing is such a mature expression of artistic relevance.”
“Young miss,” David said, his voice low. “Watch yourself now.”
“It’s okay,” Antonio said. “We’ve got to let her be herself. If she wants to be a smartass…”
“Smart aleck,” Bryce said, glancing at Eden.
“Sorry, smart aleck.”
Ava sighed, moving a strand of hair off her forehead in what she hoped was a casual, non-committal kind of way, even though inside she was seething with anger. How dare he try to erase a part of their actual real history as a family? And how dare he call her babyish? If anything was babyish, it was this whole reality farce. “Fine,” she said. “If you think television viewers are too stupid to understand things the way they really played out, I’m happy to dumb them down for you.”
“Great,” said Antonio. He turned to Javier. “Let’s get another take.”
Ava closed her eyes. Here she was, at one of the trendiest restaurants in New York, re-enacting the moment she found out she was never going to go back to the trendiest restaurant in New York. And there was nothing she could do about it.
“So,” Ava said quietly, making her voice as low and powerful as she possibly could. “What’s the catch?”
Later that evening, Antonio took David, Val, and Eden back to the apartment in the LifeStyle van, and Ava rode home with Bryce. “We can swing by that bakery you like on Columbus and pick up some dessert, if you want,” he said as the driver pulled the car away from the curb, slipping effortlessly into the line of yellow cabs, a fish in a stream.
Ava glared at him, sinking back into her seat. “Bribing me with cupcakes will get you nowhere.”
“It can’t hurt to try,” he said. He smiled, but there was no mirth behind it. Ava felt a twinge of anxiety—Bryce was a calm lake in the centre of their chaotic family, so on the rare occasions he did get upset, the waves crashed against everyone—but she pushed it down. She wasn’t going to feel sorry for him. She was the one whose entire world was crashing down on her.
Ava waited in the car while Bryce went into the bakery, then they ate the cupcakes in the backseat as their driver slid them down Broadway toward home, rain skittering across the roof like little animal feet. Ava stared out the window, her lips slick with icing, and watched a sea of umbrellas undulating beneath the bright lights of the theatre marquees, their reflections dancing in the dark pools of rainwater puddling in the gutter.
“You know,” Bryce said, flicking a crumb from her cheek, “I think if you read up a little on Gin Harbour, you might discover it’s not that bad of a place.”
“Not that bad?” said Ava. “Way to sell it.” She reached into the box and pulled out another cupcake, peeling the wrapper away and letting it fall.
Bryce glanced at the wrapper on the floor, his body tense as a coil, ready to spring. But he remained still. “There’s a lot of interesting architecture there,” he continued. “And I think you’ll find that the area is quite rich in history and culture. Did you know that in 1997 it was designated as a World Heritage Site?”
“Ooh, someone’s been on Wikipedia.”
“Avalon.” Unable to hold it in any longer, Bryce leaned forward and snatched the wrapper from the floor, folding it carefully and tucking it back into the box. “Please give this a chance. Dad and I have worked very hard to get this opportunity for you three.”
“For us?” Ava kept her gaze focused out the window, but she could feel Bryce’s eyes on her. “You did this for us, did you? You thought, Oh, hey, let’s take our kids away from the cultural capital of the entire world, move them to Canada, and make them do reality television. That would be good for them. That will turn them into bright, upstanding human beings with something meaningful to con
tribute to society…That’s the most insanely delusional thing I’ve ever heard.”
Bryce was quiet. “I know,” he said finally.
Ava turned to him, startled. “What? What do you mean, you know?”
His eyes flicked away quickly, but Ava could see his shoulders were slumped, his neck muscles tense under his collar. “It’s horrible. Every morning I wake up and think, What have I done?”
“Oh my god, Papa, seriously?” Ava shifted in her seat to face him. “We don’t have to do it, then! We can still get out of it! You didn’t sign anything, did you? Please tell me you didn’t sign anything.”
Bryce folded his hands in his lap, straightened his back. “Ava, we’re broke.” She blinked at him. “As in, give-up-the-apartment broke. As in, Dad and I doing local dry-cleaning commercials broke.”
Dread crept up Ava’s limbs, numbing her skin as it travelled across her body. “How?” she asked, digging her fingernails into her palms, trying to make herself feel something.
“It just…It goes, Ava. The jobs go, and then the money goes.” Bryce sighed. Ava had never seen him so defeated. “David hasn’t worked in months. None of those talk show guest-host spots I did turned into anything. The work dried up.” He patted her hand, smiling sadly. “No one wants to hire a couple of wasted old queens.”
“Papa, it’s…” She didn’t know what to say.
She should have known. David, he was Minnesota-rugged, with a shiny optimism and a wholesome lilt underneath his practised New York accent. But Bryce, he was born and raised in the city. He had grown up with its subway tunnels and alleyways, its bakeries and pizza joints, Madison Avenue and Central Park, the Rose Reading Room and the Met. The same way Ava had. And leaving was breaking his heart, the same way it was breaking hers.
“You’re not wasted, Papa,” she said. She moved across the seat and curled herself into him, feeling his heart thumping beneath the fabric of his suit jacket. Her papa. Her papa. “It’s okay. You’re not wasted. You’re not wasted. You’re not wasted.”
* * *
That night, Ava dreamed a vivid, candy-coated dream that sent her bolting upright in bed, her whole body shaking from the cupcake sugar rush. She could feel eyes on her, eyes everywhere—in the corners of the room, on the ceiling, under the covers, under her nightgown. Eyes in the back of her throat, snaking down her esophagus, skimming up her spine and into her brain. A camera switching on, a blinking light in the shadowy corners of her mind, illuminating her darkest thoughts.
She slipped out of her room and down the same hall where she’d learned to walk as a baby, running her hands along the walls that guided her as she stumbled through the dark to her dads’ room after a nightmare, tiny toes catching on the edges of the throw rugs. How many times had she taken these same steps? Thousands? How would she learn to walk through new halls, to negotiate the creaks and groans of new floorboards, the particular height of new staircases, the curves and edges of new rooms?
In the kitchen, she opened the fridge, unsure of what she wanted, just needing something solid in her hand. She stared blankly at the shelves of food, finally pulling out a box of cherries. You probably couldn’t even get cherries in Gin Harbour. Especially not in March.
As she closed the door, she heard a breath behind her.
“Hi,” Eden said, the word tripping out over her thumb.
“Hey,” Ava said. She held out the box. “Want some?” Eden pulled her thumb out of her mouth and replaced it with a cherry. “Here.” Ava held out her hand as Eden finished chewing, and the pit dropped from her sister’s lips into her palm. “Maybe we should get a bowl.”
“We could spit them off the balcony,” Eden said. “Remember, like we did last summer?”
“We got in a lot of trouble for that,” Ava said with a smile. She tossed Eden’s pit into the sink and wiped her hand on her pajama pants. “Come on.”
They stepped out through the glass door and onto the balcony. It had always been Ava’s favourite place in the apartment. She loved being so far above everything, being a part of the world yet still removed, still somehow separate. The rain had stopped but the furniture was still wet, little puddles in the seats of the chairs, water pooled in the hammock. She wiped off the patio table with the palm of her hand and placed the box of cherries on top. “Okay. Lock and load.”
She and Eden popped cherries in their mouths, then once they had sucked the flesh from the pits, put their hands on the railing. Ava glanced sideways at Eden. “One…two…three!” They both leaned back and spat, and Ava watched as their cherry pits vaulted into the air in identical arcs before disappearing into the darkness below.
“I think mine won,” Eden said, grabbing on to the railing. “It went a tiny bit further, didn’t it?”
“I think you’re right,” Ava said. “Let’s do another one.”
“Hey, remember when we had the funeral for that sparrow?” Eden asked, pulling apart two cherries that were attached at the stems.
“Of course,” said Ava. The bird had smashed into the glass doors while the family was at the dinner table. Their dads hadn’t even made them finish eating before planning the funeral. “Remember the little coffin that Papa made out of that tissue box?”
“And then Dad sang ‘Amazing Grace’ so loud, and the neighbours upstairs got mad and started blasting their television.”
“Even David couldn’t compete with the screaming on Dr. Phil.”
Eden giggled, then stopped. “What did we do with it, after? The bird, I mean.”
Ava thought about it for a moment, rolling her cherry pit around on her tongue. “I can’t remember,” she said. She felt the pit slip down her throat. What else were they going to forget?
As she glanced back into the apartment, she realized that all their stories were locked in those closets, tucked into these cupboards, circling this bathtub drain. Everything that made them who they were was here. Without that window seat they would fight over, without this fridge with the squeaky door, without the corner of the balcony where Charlotte their pet spider lived, how would they even know who they were? And how could they be the same family in a new house, in a new city, with the whole world watching them? How could they still be the Harts?
She didn’t know. She just knew they had to try.
Reality Check
Reality TV Writing for Reality TV Fans
LifeStyle Announces New Reality Series, Home Is Where the Hart Is
Lex Jackson, staff writer
03/15/09 9:00 am Filed to REVIEW
A new reality series starring Celebrity magazine favourites David and Bryce Hart is in development at the LifeStyle Network, Reality Check has confirmed.
David Hart might be familiar to viewers for playing Findley MacLean’s father on the teen drama Findley’s River, which ran on the DX for 5 seasons, beginning in 2002. Following that show’s cancellation in 2007, he returned to his stage roots, most recently performing as Brick in an all-queer off-Broadway musical re-imagining of Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Bryce Hart, David’s partner of 20 years, is an award-winning African-American journalist and the former host of Channel One’s popular morning show, American Wake-Up. Ever since his dismal two-month stint at the Late Night desk in 2006, where he was eventually replaced by Zoe Conrad, he has been cycling through guest-hosting gigs on the late-night talk show circuit.
According to the logline, Home Is Where the Hart Is will be a fly-on-the-wall series “combining the fish-out-of-water motif of The Simple Life with the feel-good family tone of Jon and Kate Plus 8.” In it, the Harts, along with their three adopted children—Avalon (12), Valhalla (11), and Eden (10)—leave behind their cosmopolitan life in New York City to run a bed and breakfast in the historic fishing village of Gin Harbour, Nova Scotia.
“We chose Nova Scotia because it has an undeniable exotic appeal, while still being culturally familiar enough to remain relevant to the average American viewer,” says Bob Axelrod, president and CEO of LifeStyle. “We t
hink audiences will love the picturesque landscapes, the friendly, down-to-earth people, and the heartwarming family dynamic the Harts will bring to the town.” LifeStyle has confirmed an eight-episode run for the show’s first season.
Home Is Where the Hart Is will premiere on Thursday, July 9 at 8 pm EST, following the season 12 premiere of Hot Dog Vendors of Atlanta.
Mags
January 2009
“White Lies”
“Get the fuck out of here,” Frankie Kovach said, as she lit the bowl of her bong and took a long inhale, regarding Mags with narrow eyes, before expelling the breath in a loud exhale that dissolved into a cough. “We’re busy.”
Mags leaned against the kitchen counter and stared back at her sister. Their apartment was so small that the kitchen and the living room were the same room, a small counter separating all the broken appliances and the cracking linoleum floor from the pull-out couch and the television. This charming kitchen/living room combo was, unfortunately, also Mags’s bedroom. “Where am I supposed to go?” she asked. “You’re sitting on my bed.”
Frankie sat back on the couch, pulling a limp, tattooed arm over her shoulder and nestling into the body it was attached to. In her other hand she held the television remote, and she ran through the channels aimlessly. “Do I look like I care?”
Normally, Mags would be at the library after school, but it was closed for some literary event, and she didn’t have the energy to go to any of her regular haunts—the hotel lobbies, the 24-hour laundromats, the mall food courts. “Come on, Frankie. I need to do my homework.”
Frankie laughed. “Oh, honey. No you don’t. You really, really don’t.”
The body on the couch stirred. Elias, Frankie’s boyfriend. Mags could see his eyes trying to focus on her face through an alcoholic haze, and she felt a thread of revulsion unspool in her stomach. A skate punk who broke into cars to steal butts out of the ashtrays, Elias had been homeless before he met Frankie. He was basically a human cockroach—impossible to get rid of. “Is that Maggie? Why the hell is she here?”